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Books by Aarati Kanekar

This book considers ideas from one medium that might have been appropriated and transformed by ot... more This book considers ideas from one medium that might have been appropriated and transformed by others; highlighting their uniqueness and limitations. It addresses the manner in which this translation occurs across different forms of creation, construction, and expression.The intention is to address broader questions of representation and construction of meaning across media that eventually impact processes of design formulation. By integrating knowledge and modes of thinking from multiple means of expression, they are able to advance their understanding in ways that would be impossible through a unitary line of inquiry.

Exploring works such as Guiseppe Terragni’s Danteum, Peter Eisenman’s Moving Arrows Errors and Other Errors, Peter Zumthor’s Swiss Sound Box, Rem Koolhaas’s Kunsthal, Perry Kulper and Smout Allen’s projects that involve mapping as a generative tool, this book provides a framework of understanding architecture through operative links to other arts that include poetry, literature, film, music, and theatre. Key concepts discussed are: poetic allegory, montage, narrative structures, generative mapping, representative space, and spatial construction of meaning.

Book Chapters by Aarati Kanekar

The Production Sites of Architecture, edited by Sophia Psarra, 2019

In “Architecture and the Pathognomic”, Hejduk ominously calls architecture’s intricate choreograp... more In “Architecture and the Pathognomic”, Hejduk ominously calls architecture’s intricate choreography with other disciplines, a ‘pathological wound’ this notion has been referred to by other scholars such as Connah who calls it a ‘hump’ but it is in the questioning and understanding of disciplinary boundaries that one can unravel intricacies of the discipline and aspects that can be considered inherently ‘architectural’. Post 1960s, in the critique of modernism, the work of what is often referred to, as the late avant-garde was especially prominent in pushing these boundaries. Libeskind’s Chamber Works, Peter Eisenman’s Moving Arrows Eros and Other Errors, and Joyce’s Garden project by Tschumi, all engaged with sites of fiction and reality and implicated the discipline of architecture with other arts such as literature, poetry, and music. What makes some of these theoretical projects especially fascinating, is not only the questioning of disciplinary boundaries, but the exploration of what constitutes architectural charge and brief. This essay will examine some trans-disciplinary sites of inquiry for their role in challenging the notion of charge and brief in the production of architectural knowledge.
This essay takes cue from Baxandall’s intriguing notion of charge and brief in order to question autonomy of the discipline, the internal logic of the medium as it affects the creation and production of the artifact, its spatial and social operations, and their role in the production of architecture. In doing so, it interrogates what constitutes charge and brief in architecture. With a majority of architectural works, the charge is embedded in the origination of a project. The designer is generally given a ‘charge’ which is quite often linked to a building typology, while the brief consists of a more specific mode of design development which includes programmatic development often in consultation with the client. So in a conventional sense, much of what architecture does has a defined charge. The brief, as this essay discusses, is not merely restricted to user requirements that are conveyed to the architect but encompass various design considerations that are integral to the formal and spatial language of the work. The specificity of how one develops the brief is inherent in the manner in which design language, social and economic aspects, user requirements, all come into play. But, the role of the charge and brief become especially significant when one considers certain distinctive projects that have ambiguity built into definition of the charge thereby leading to the construction of brief becoming of vital significance for design decisions. Many of the theoretical projects of the late avant-garde in one way or another delve into the question of architecture’s autonomy and undoubtedly interrogate the notion of charge and brief. This essay questions if explorations of disciplinary limits different from traditional architectural practices when it comes to the construction of the architectural brief and the manner in which these explorations contribute to production of knowledge and architectural practices.
Through an analysis of Terragni’s Danteum, to narrative structures such as Eisenman’s Moving Arrows Eros and Other Errors, this essay specifically considers how literary fiction contributes to the production of the architectural brief. It contends that the nature of “charge” and the development of “brief” are of paramount importance in the production of architectural knowledge. This is especially evident when it comes to seemingly distant disciplines such as literature and poetry when translated to an architectural agenda. It considers an alternative -- external sites of pre-production that offer new cultures of knowledge but in these cases the new cultures are adapted to formal equivalencies within the design discipline and as a commentary on prevalent the discourse within the discipline.
While certainly not the norm in a majority of architectural works, these two projects, especially due to their unique nature, explicitly demonstrate how not only the charge, but the brief itself, can be conceived as a significant “pre-sites” for production of architectural knowledge. It is not a surprise that external, seemingly distant programs such as the structural aspects of Romeo and Juliet narratives or Dante’s Divine Comedy can be translated to spatial and formal languages but that these sites offer us new insights into those external sources themselves – aspects that were implicit in these sources become explicit in a different media of operation. The main impact on the production of architectural knowledge that these projects demonstrate that even though based on external schemas there is an inherent logic of medium and discipline that is at work. So while the intricate choreography between architecture and other arts is at play, disciplinary boundaries can be stretched but don’t disappear since the medium of expression intrinsically impacts the work.

Papers by Aarati Kanekar

Routledge eBooks, Feb 9, 2024

This paper considers how incidental and accidental decisions play a significant role as design ge... more This paper considers how incidental and accidental decisions play a significant role as design generators in a project. The choice of reusing and exploring a seemingly ‘ordinary’ architectural element throughout the project problematizes accepted architectural conditions, as well as lays bare how deeper psychological traumas underpin the design vocabulary through an analysis of 23/B – a house built by the architect for herself.

Perspecta 46: Errors, Aug 2013

The specific nature of an expressive medium often becomes apparent only when attempts to translat... more The specific nature of an expressive medium often becomes apparent only when attempts to translate formal structures from another medium result in discrepancies leading to unforeseen innovations. This essay considers inconsistencies within the world of the Divine Comedy and its translations across media. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is often seen to be a perfect work of poetry. Nevertheless, scholars such as Freccero and Kleiner have pointed out specific mismappings which underlie the work that are strategic ‘errors’. While these anomalies range from the literary to scientific, this essay concentrates on deviations of order, number, landscape, and event as reflected in the poem, their mapping or mismapping in cartography, their translation to paintings, and finally into an architectural project, the Danteum by Terragni. When Giuseppe Terragni designed the Danteum in 1942 as an allegory of the poem, its spatial “errors” prompted him to rethink fundamental architectural concepts of geometrical abstraction and embodied spatial experience. By examining various representations of the Comedy throughout history, this article will explore how the potential for error built into every translation helps constitute each medium’s autonomy. Interestingly, Terragni emulating Dante’s ‘Epistle to Can Grande della Scala’, has his ‘Relazione sul Danteum’, a document that maps the Divine Comedy onto the design decisions taken for the Danteum. Nevertheless, analyzing the project it is quite obvious that, direct mapping is problematic and that there are certain decisions that are inherently linked to the architect’s design language. Given the proclivity of the translation of the Divine Comedy through various forms of expression ranging from music, paintings, sculpture, architecture, and film, the question of mapping the original work becomes even more pronounced and often mismapping seen as an ‘error’ is more suggestive of the logic of the medium. By examining various representations of the Comedy throughout history, this article will explore how the potential for error built into every translation helps constitute each medium’s autonomy.

The consumption of architectural representation has shifted considerably in the last two decades,... more The consumption of architectural representation has shifted considerably in the last two decades, and therefore the critiques have also repositioned themselves. Against this background, this essay analyzes Lebbeus Woods’ drawings that have at different times either provoked intense criticism for a naïve socio-cultural agenda or great admiration for their imaginative and seductive power. This paper considers the representational techniques used by Woods in the Sarajevo project to discuss the role of history and the aesthetics of destruction. The discussion addresses the inherent duality and tension evident within these drawings, especially in the techniques employed for representation, which on one hand tend to be viewed as built manifestations and hence criticized for aestheticizing war and lacking a deeper socio-cultural understanding, while on the other hand are perceived as flights of the imagination inducing metaphorical and ideational possibilities that offer provocative ways of thinking.

The Journal of Architecture, Jan 1, 2005

This paper discusses the relationship between an architectural project, Giuseppe Terragni’s desig... more This paper discusses the relationship between an architectural project, Giuseppe Terragni’s design of the Danteum, and a poem, Dante’s Divine Comedy. The project is of special interest precisely because it takes the poem as its architectural design program. However, in this particular case, the relationship between poetry and architecture might have been traveled in both directions and in multiple ways. Before Terragni ever interpreted it as a program of architectural design, The Divine Comedy had been an inspiration for works in numerous media including painting, sculpture, and music. While descriptions offered in hymns such as those of Paulus Silentarious on the Hagia Sophia suggest that intersections between poetry and buildings were part of the Byzantine and early Christian cultural tradition that precedes Dante’s Divine Comedy. This paper considers various echoes of The Divine Comedy and the metamorphoses of its expanded body across verbal, visual, and spatial media, while allowing that some of the spatial motifs that were incorporated in the poem have their origins in a similar translation from works in other media, including architecture. this paper questions how the internal logic of architecture, as a symbolic medium, transforms aspects of the poem: How might architecture enrich our understanding of the Comedy in ways which would otherwise not be available? The question is discussed in three parts: part one considers the possibility that architecture underlies the poem already; part two examines visual images based on the poem; part three looks at the Danteum to see how meaning has been projected and transformed. The fact that some of the central myths of a culture are distributedly recorded over many different works in different symbolic media is rather familiar. Thus, it is not particularly surprising that an individual work of art of special significance can acquire an extended body comprising subsequent re-statements in media other than the original. The question this article addresses is not why The Divine Comedy, having already served as a point of departure for paintings or sculptures, was also to serve as a point of departure for architectural design. This question only calls for a circumstantial and historical answer that is very much linked to the status of the poem in Italian culture at the time as well as to the aims of both client and architect. The possibility that the poem, prior to inspiring specific architectural designs, was itself inspired by architectural precedents expressing some of the same underlying mythological themes simply confirms that some manner of transmutation from one medium to another is not only possible, but perhaps even expected. What the article addresses instead is what, about a given work, changes as the symbolic medium changes. If meaning is to some extent dependent upon the medium in which it is constructed or expressed, then translations across media without transformation, loss or accretion are impossible. the more particular questions raised in this article are: what does our knowledge of The Divine Comedy contribute to our understanding of Terragni’s design and what does the latter contribute to our new understanding of the Comedy? To some extent these questions are related to yet another issue which is answered more clearly in this paper - in what exactly consists the act of design formulation that produces the Danteum?

LA CONSTRUCTION SPATIALE DU SENS EN ARCHITECTURE : UN PROJET TRANSDISCIPLINAIRE. Introduction by ... more LA CONSTRUCTION SPATIALE DU SENS EN ARCHITECTURE : UN PROJET TRANSDISCIPLINAIRE.
Introduction by Editor [Prof. Yves Abrioux]

La pratique architecturale transdisciplinaire exposée ici a été nourrie par des échanges transatlantiques. Développée par John Peponis et Kenneth Knoespel à l’Institut technologique de Géorgie (Atlanta, U.S.A.) et à l’Université technologique d’Athènes, elle est enseignée en option aux doctorants en architecture de ces deux institutions et à l’université de Cincinnati (par Aarati Kanekar). C’est une pratique expérimentale consistant à élaborer un projet architectural à partir d’une oeuvre d’art (littéraire, visuelle, musicale, chorégraphique, cinématographique …), sans qu’à aucun moment ce projet ne représente l’oeuvre en question. Il s’agit plutôt de mobiliser cette oeuvre, dans le souci de renouveler un certain nombre de questions relatives à la fonctionnalité architectural, à la notion de syntaxe spatiale, au statut de l’intentionnalité en architecture, etc. Le jeu entre la source et le projet doit permettre au processus de problématisation architecturale de ne pas se cantonner à la simple critique, mais de toujours chercher à inventer. Toute activité expérimentale ou pédagogique conduite dans ce contexte s’accompagne obligatoirement d’une réflexion théorique, laquelle est considérée comme partie intégrante du processus. Dans un cas (AK), une phase de création de jeux a été incorporée à cette dynamique ; dans un autre (AT, KM), l’intérêt porté à une source précise a été délaissé, au bénéfice d’un travail sur la question du rythme en musique et en architecture.

Les deux dimensions architecturale et théorique de cette pratique innovante sont exposées ici dans une série de textes rédigés par différents participants au projet. Ce qui les rassemble est sans doute avant tout l’attention prêtée à l’élaboration d’une pratique diagrammatique. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de prendre acte du rôle bien connu des diagrammes dans la création architecturale. Le diagramme est considéré ici comme constituant un espace cognitif partagé, recelant un réel potentiel d’invention et de transformation. Plus précisément, il est envisagé comme le site même du passage d’un acte de compréhension à un projet pleinement architectural. Dans la pratique exposée ici, le diagramme apparaît dans un premier temps sous la forme d’annotations scandant la lecture d’une oeuvre originale : tableau, roman, chorégraphie, etc. Or, l’un des principaux intérêts du diagramme considéré comme un système notationnel (dans un sens emprunté aux travaux de Nelson Goodman) est d’autoriser une pratique de la recontextualisation. Ainsi, un ensemble de marques le plus souvent hétérogènes, représentant l’interprétation diagrammatique d’une oeuvre appartenant à une discipline artistique autre que l’architecture, se prêtera à une relecture et à une ré-élaboration dans des termes spécifiquement architecturaux. C’est même ce processus de transposition et de recréation diagrammatique qui donne une existence propre au projet architectural engendré selon cette procédure. Celui-ci ne saurait se réduire à un reflet, même lointain, de l’oeuvre source. Sa sémantique est architecturale, c’est-à-dire spatiale. L’intérêt du parcours transdisciplinaire étant de permettre l’émergence de contraintes innovantes, non prédéterminées par le langage fonctionnel de
l’architecture, mais librement assumées, l’oeuvre d’art étrangère insérée dans le processus de création architecturale a pour effet de radicaliser la puissance de perturbation créatrice implicite dans la pratique diagrammatique même.

Les textes reproduits ici reprennent des concepts architecturaux aussi fondamentaux que ceux de formulation ou de configuration. Ils définissent les processus de notation et de transformation dans des termes inspirés par les concepts de représentation, d’exemplification, desaturation, etc., avancés par N. Goodman, mais aussi en évoquant des notions familières à la poétique ou à l’esthétique, comme celles de métaphore, d’emblème, de rythme ou de variation,. Le rôle du jeu dans le processus de création y est également évoqué. L’ambition principale reste toutefois de dégager une pratique diagrammatique réellement ouverte, qui soit susceptible de transformer les données mêmes de la construction spatiale du sens en architecture.

As part of an experimental studio which takes a work in another medium (literature, cinema or pai... more As part of an experimental studio which takes a work in another medium (literature, cinema or painting) as a program for architectural design, students are asked to create three-dimensional games. The games mediate between a reading of the original work documented in diagrams, and the design of an architectural project aimed at the exploration of architectural language. In this paper the logical and formal structure of games is examined in greater detail to explore the interaction of structure, playability, and intelligibility in the creation of a morphic language. Acknowledgements: I am grateful to all my students at the University of Cincinnati who participated in the theory studios over the past two years that provided a rich material for this discussion. I would also like to thank John Peponis and Sonit Bafna for all the discussions that influenced the development of this paper.

… , 3rd International Space Syntax Symposium Atlanta, Jan 1, 2001

Translations across symbolic forms necessarily involve shifts and transformations of meaning due ... more Translations across symbolic forms necessarily involve shifts and transformations of meaning due to the logic of the medium. They challenge us to examine fundamental metaphors as an aspect of design reasoning, particularly in relation to the construction of spatial relationships and meanings. They also involve the exploration of diagrams as a way of moving from the space of linguistic description to architectural space where topology and visual image are tightly interfaced. In this paper, Terragni’s unrealized design for a monument to Dante, which projects The Divine Comedy into an architectural schema is examined as a case study. The Divine Comedy is treated as an expanded body of work that includes, in addition to the original text, a multitude of paintings, as well as Terragni’s project. The paper draws a distinction between transformations of meaning that arise of necessity due to the internal logic of symbolic forms and transformations which manifest specific design intentions. The Divine Comedy with its compositional, numerological, and descriptive attributes forms the program for the architectural project. Nevertheless, as in any project, the program does not, in itself, generate architecture. This paper shows that in the Danteum project three major operations are involved in design synthesis. The first inflects the familiar metaphor of the column as a body. The second uses recursive ‘extreme to mean ratio’ proportions to establish nesting, repetition and scaling, and through these a sense of unity. The third uses a pattern of overlapping squares so as to create a dialogue between strongly differentiated interiors and transitional zones. These operations in conjunction with the compositional and narrative aspects of the poem interpreted as program make the translation from linguistic space to architectural space possible. Thus, design formulation is not based on a single metaphor, but rather on a system of metaphors working together to bring physical elements, spatial relationships and design operations within a coherent framework of design reasoning.

The point of departure for this paper is the idea of morphic language as addressed in The Social ... more The point of departure for this paper is the idea of morphic language as addressed in The Social Logic of Space according to which architecture is situated between natural language and mathematical language. The paper explores this idea of morphic language to investigate an architectural project that can be most closely associated with natural language. It examines the Danteum project where design undertakes translation across different art forms, from the space of language and literature to the space of buildings and architecture. In this unrealized building Terragniís design for a monument to Dante projects The Divine Comedy into an architectural schema and orchestrates it at various levels. Translations across symbolic forms by necessity involve shifts and transformations. Thus, they challenge us to examine fundamental metaphors as an aspect of design reasoning, particularly in relation to the construction of spatial relationships and meanings. Being a building that conveys a distinctive meaning, this paper argues that the Danteum does so without the use of seemingly idiosyncratic elements or decoration, rather it is through the play of metaphor and syntactic combinations of elements that meanings are constructed. Ultimately, at least in this project, in addition to the symbolic use of number, it is the ostensibly arbitrary shape that creates the ultimate metaphor and ties together aspects of composition and geometry to convey particular meanings.

Translations across different symbolic media necessarily involve reconstruction and transformatio... more Translations across different symbolic media necessarily involve reconstruction and transformation arising from the manner in which meaning is constituted in each medium. Terragni's design for a monument to Dante, based on The Divine Comedy, raises questions of translatability between literature and architecture that are seldom explored in design or theory. In this thesis, the Danteum is taken as a point of departure in order to illuminate The Divine Comedy as an intersection of linguistic, visual and architectural media. It is suggested that while the project is an attempt to present a poem as a building, the poem itself absorbs into linguistic form cosmological and architectural ideas that were first realized in built form. Spatial relationships, their logic and the manner in which they are built and manifested are emphasized as one of the common dimension of meaning that mediate translations across symbolic forms, a dimension which holds special interest for architecture. The interactions between abstraction and concretion, structures and particulars, architecture conceived and architecture experienced, which are fundamental to all creative perception and thinking, provide the threads that link the transformations of meaning not only across media, but also across distinct styles, as we compare the Danteum, medieval cosmology, illuminated manuscripts, Botticelli's drawings, Hagia Sophia and other works, normally situated at varying distances from The Divine Comedy. Step by step, an expanded field of interpretation of the original project is constructed. As if looking for the principle that holds together the facets of a crystal, the aim is to build a theoretical framework within which the construction and translatability of meaning become more tractable.

Calvino’s Invisible Cities has been a popular design studio exercise in architecture schools. The... more Calvino’s Invisible Cities has been a popular design studio exercise in architecture schools. The general tendency in these exercises has been to concentrate on the literal descriptions of places. Nevertheless, reading many of Calvino’s novels, especially Invisible Cities, one has a distinct feeling that there is not only an inherent temporal logic to its composition, as we would expect in all narratives, but rather a more particular suggestion of an intricate set of spatial relationships in its construction. One level of meaning can be read purely in the content, while the compositional structure seems to hint at another dimension of meaning. One can follow the linear succession of pages and read it sequentially, and, at the same time, it is possible to relate compositional units to form meaningful patterns. The meaning embedded in the content can thus be distinguished from the meaning constructed through the structure. The paper explores the structure of the novel, revealing, that while there is a wealth of visual images one is led to suspect the presence of a more abstract shape that underlies the book and that constitutes an additional and perhaps deeper layer of meaning. The analysis of Invisible Cities shows that a sequential reading is related to the content, and thus, leads to an experiential understanding. In contrast to this, the synchronic understanding of the whole reveals the formal shape underlying the compositions and their parts. The analysis demonstrates that it is in this abstract shape that the construction and transformation of meaning can be understood. The notion of transformation in Invisible Cities is synchronically apparent through Calvino's narration of the 55 imaginary cities woven around an abstract figure of symmetry and metaphor, while the representational aspect is more diachronic (sequential), and is evident in the explicit reference to the game of chess in the content and the implicit formal analog adopted in the compositional structure. The two levels at which the composition operate - linear succession of pages can be contrasted with the abstract relationship of symmetry and metaphor. Ultimately bringing forth a much deeper issue of how in literature concepts and shapes are related. This in turn signifies the relation between concepts and space, since configured space can be considered as shape. In Invisible Cities, concepts are represented in the form of compositional units. These are arranged in a relational pattern that imparts an abstract shape to the novel. It is the spatial logic that is at work here. The study underscores the fact that generally in reading literature, the proclivity to initially grasp the narrative rather than the compositional structure is often reversed in architecture, and the investigation of the compositional structure in literature enriches the narrative itself contributing to creative design exercises.

This paper examines changing approaches in historiographical studies of ancient Indian treatises ... more This paper examines changing approaches in historiographical studies of ancient Indian treatises related to architecture. The focus of the study is the work of Ram Raz written in the 19th century and its comparison to the work of Kramrisch in the 20th century. Ram Raz’s work is especially significant for a number of reasons-- that its author was an Indian; that it was the first serious attempt to describe Indian architecture independently,
and in its own terms; and above all, that it deals with an issue that makes it quite anachronistic, i.e. the deciphering of traditional manuals of Shilpashastra--the science of architecture and related arts. What becomes interesting in this case is that, Ram Raz, although an Indian, is looking at architecture and architectural writing through the filter of his age, while Kramrisch, although a western scholar is much more interpretive. This is
especially important in the current post colonial debate wherein it has been quite common to accept all aspects of production in the light of cultural domination. But, examining specific cases one realizes that it is not just the cultural differences that play a significant role, rather the particular intricacies of the situation in which these have operated to generate that work that are important. This paper re-examines the position of Ram Raz within the historiography of Indian architecture, to show that despite addressing the same project, his work is significantly different from that of Kramrisch, and despite appearances, shares similar epistemological constructs with his contemporaries. This goes against the accepted historical version that the historiography of Indian architecture shows a consistent development from the early nineteenth century to the present. Rather, it explicates that the development of studies of Indian architecture seem to have moved chronologically through a series of discourses, each entailing substantial semantic shifts, even in the basic definition of the term “architecture.”

More than an abstract diagram, built form can be looked at as an ensemble of meanings. One of the... more More than an abstract diagram, built form can be looked at as an ensemble of meanings. One of the ways in which meaning is reflected is through temporal events. This study analyzes urban form through the filter of processional rituals of festivity. Festive events, though they can be recorded by history, draw heavily on the realm of memory to create a freer, more evocative, and non-parametric view of the past. This makes them a fascinating distillation through which to examine the built form. In many places, the spatial organization and layout were choreographed in relation to the ritual movements, making the celebration of processional rituals of festivity a significant dynamic social and temporal dimension of the static form of the built environment that offered a unique way of urban renewal. This paper discusses the basic understanding of ritual, festival, celebration and their manifestation in space, it further analyzes the relationship between spatial form and temporal events by specifically examing religous processional rituals and urban form in South Indian temple cities of Madurai, Srirangam, and Suchindram. The study shows that processions have a tremendous impact on urban form and spaces - some of which lose their significance and character without the rituals they were meant to house. Even when the original processional ritual is changes, urban spaces have a determining role in the creation of new rituals.

... Massachusetts Institute of Technology June 1992. @ Aarati Kanekar 1992. All rights reserved. ... more ... Massachusetts Institute of Technology June 1992. @ Aarati Kanekar 1992. All rights reserved. ... Signature of Author Aarati Kanekar Department of Architecture May 8, 1992 Certified by Julian Beinart Professor of Architecturý' Thesis Supervisor II - I ...

The Production Sites of Architecture, edited by Sophia Psarra, 2019

Routledge eBooks, Feb 9, 2024

Perspecta 46: Errors, Aug 2013

The Journal of Architecture, Jan 1, 2005

… , 3rd International Space Syntax Symposium Atlanta, Jan 1, 2001